Quelle surprise

I'm sure a good psycho-analysis expert can explain that common theme in people's dreams, when they're running to escape something and but can't seem able to get ahead of it. As a child I used to have a dream in which I was being chased down by an object which resembled a giant kneecap, much like that enormous round boulder that tumbled after Indiana Jones (or, in the form of Homer Simpson, down the stairs after Bart).

The only reason I bring this up is that I currently have the same sense of weak-legged uselessness by the current state of the world, especially the encroaching political and social divisions in my home country and in the US, where the needs of certain individuals to satisfy their ambitions are running roughshod over decency and respect.

But in a somewhat lesser ranking, global importance-wise, I also feel frustrated by yet another woeful England performance at an international football tournament. The ignominy of England going out of Euro 2016 to Iceland compounds a four-day period in which the UK chose to leave the EU, it's prime minister resigned (and in the process triggered a contest amongst people like the gormless Jeremy Hunt who have precious little to offer the post other than "that job looks a lark, I might give it a go”), and Her Majesty's Opposition began collapsing faster than a house of cards in a tornado thanks to a well-meaning and well-principled but lukewarm leader. But enough of all that. The less pressing, but more acutely annoying boil du jour in need of lancing is that of England (the football team, not the increasingly isolated corner of the former Great Britain).

No one went into Euro 2016 with much expectation about England's prospects, but there was at least a modicum of excitement about the attacking options at Roy Hodgson's disposal - the it-shouldn't-work-but-it-does goal prowess of Jamie Vardy, Harry Kane's prolific season with Tottenham, Daniel Sturridge's return to hunger, the mercurial Raheem Stirling and even the untried but exciting prospect of Marcus Rashford. But there were also the same-old, same-old problems of midfield cohesiveness and the even bigger lack of real strength in defence.

We can analyse these points to death, of course, but the frustration we're all left with is that surely there was enough in the 23-man Hodgson took to squad to France that would have had some fighting chance of progress? But, no. A promising first half against Russia on the opening weekend was undermined by a dozy second half (and not helped by the savage hooliganism in and around Nice's Stade Vélodrome). A spirited win over Wales reminded us that luck can work for you at these competitions, but then it was back to usual against Slovakia with a forgettable 0-0 draw. And thus England just about progressed into the knockout stage, with little to be really proud of but, progress is progress, and bring on Iceland and a slew of corny jokes about Kerry Katona and Bejam supermarkets.

When I first took up blogging six years ago, almost to the day, it was to vent a considerable amount of froth at England's ejection from the World Cup in South Africa. Apart from a very valid complaint about a disallowed Frank Lampard goal against - guess who? - Germany, much of my fizzing was about the ever-present hubris that has followed England into these tournaments, pretty much ever since the penultimate day of July 1966. It's that sense of entitlement - because England invented association football, because it created the first national team, because it hosts the world's most lucrative domestic league, because it used to be the seat of an empire, and because England won the World Cup once in the competition's 86-year history. No wonder our soon-to-be former EU partners can't wait to see the back of us...

This time around the expectation may have been worse: a squad comprised of players like Kane and Vardy, who'd enjoyed remarkable domestic seasons, on top of a ten-out-of-ten record in England's somewhat soft qualifying group for Euro 2016 gave false hope. And with this Roy Hodgson, a decent enough journeyman of a manager, masked his inadequacies in being able to make the right decisions at this level.

Hodgson did the decent thing by resigning on the spot after last night's defeat to Iceland. The FA even dragged him back to face the press today, though it's hard to tell what they intended to achieve. "I don't really know what I'm doing here," he told reporters in his first answer, "but I was told it's important for me to appear as everyone is still smarting". On reflection, we didn't know what he was doing in France either. Certainly not adhering to the sporting adage about playing to your strengths, which he didn't with dozy substitutions and starting line-ups that undermined the entire 90 minutes' performance.

As for the "everyone still smarting", that will probably include Danny Baker, who launched into a Krakatoan tirade on Twitter during the Iceland game and was still going when I went to bed. Already flaming the dreary statements-of-the-obvious of ITV commentator Glenn Hoddle (sample: "Oh we are getting Glenn Hoddle's reaction now. Next up the reaction of a paving stone in Blackpool."), Baker went into a fury of tweets - almost all unrepeatable - about the state of England, its manager and the motiviation of its players, including "I simply do not buy that footballers feel bad after game like that when they will be back on £200k in a few weeks. Its impossible."

While it is right for Hodgson to take responsibility - and some blame - for England's performance, the players will need to take a long hard look at theselves. Baker, again: "Absolutely disgraceful, #England. You useless over paid, over indulged mollycoddled shits. You are beyond shame. Disgrace to working people" and even ex-England forward Chris Waddle on BBC Radio 5 Live: "We haven't got leaders. They're all pampered, they're all [listening to] headphones and you can't get anything out of them."

And there lies the real rub. An England squad populated by some of the highest paid young men on the planet, with a manager earning a salary of £3.5 million a year, who went about Iceland with a patent lack of respect that came back to bite them on the arse. It was plain for all to see. I've seen it at Chelsea, when lower-tier cup opposition comes along, and the arriviste millionaires in blue play with such palpable disdain you almost end up willing them to lose, not that, on last season's evidence, that would deliver the slap to the chops that was warranted.

Iceland may have been a team drawn from a national population of just 330,000, but they played with determination, discipline and a complete absence of fear when hitting England on the break. And look what happened when they did. But why should they have fear at all? Only in England do we have this view that our footballers are rarified beings, that somehow these young men have ascended the rest of us, simply because they are in their early 20s and driving cars that you or I wouldn't ever be able to afford in a lifetime. That's not a statement of material envy, but a reflection on how England's so-called elite managed to look worse than average against a team managed by a part-time dentist, who took the game to England and were rewarded for it.

So, the inevitable: what next? I've been here before. You've been here before. We've all been here before. We've tried different managers, different nationalities of managers, different coaching combinations, different 'grass roots' initiatives, you name it, England and the English FA have tried it to no avail. This lack of a plan is also informing the suggestions coming forth for Hodgson's replacement. It's a list that includes both the obvious and the just-thought-of random: Gareth Southgate (because he coached the Under 21s so...er...it's his turn); Alan Pardew (because it's his turn to); Steve Bruce (because he may be available); Arsène Wenger (because some people don't really take these things seriously).

Whoever gets the job - and I think I'm even on the list, given the number of possibilities so far explored - the one quality I implore them to apply to their charges is a little humility. England needs a manager prepared to tell the players "Look lads, face facts. They're just as good as you. They may not walk into games clutching their Louis Vuitton washbags like you, with an army of flunkies carrying their luggage for them, as yours do, but they'll match you out there, player for player. What's going to be your reaction to that?". Because up until now, I've not seen much evidence of any of that.

Woke up this morning with 'dem post-referendum blues

"Good luck," said the simple coverline on today's edition of Libération, the left-leaning French newspaper. This wouldn't have been so acerbic (one Twitter wag claimed that France "was now trolling the UK") had it not been accompanied by a full page image of a Union Flag-waving Boris Johnson dangling clown-like from a zip wire. Magnifique.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the man who aspires to be the next prime minister of Britain, whose de facto leadership of the Leave campaign in the EU referendum was largely to facilitate his ambition of being the next tenant of 10 Downing Street. Not much, mind, about the future of the UK's prosperity but - hey! - what's in a detail?

Of course, the picture of BoJo, taken of the former London mayor during the 2012 Olympics, could easily be excused as a good old piece of self-depreciating British fun. I'm always told by foreign friends that they love the English sense of humour. I wonder what has become of that now?

Make no mistake, as Leavers echo Margaret Thatcher's borrowing of St. Francis of Assisi's poem (you know - discord/harmony, error/truth, doubt/faith, despair/unity, etc...), the seismic outcome of Thursday's referendum has done more to spread discord than it may have sought to repel. Because if you boil down its intentions, and the intentions of those who voted, to their bare bones, two truths emerge.

The first is that the referendum was, to begin with, an act of appeasement by David Cameron to the Tory party's ever-present Eurosceptic schism, which was then seized upon by Johnson as his chance to go for No.10. Quite what he would be qualified for when he gets in there remains to be seen, but if nothing else, his reputation for buffoonery doesn't bode well for Britain's reputation abroad (though no doubt he will find a kindred spirit in a certain prospective US presidential candidate with equally manic blond hair).

The trouble is that, post-referendum, Britain is anything but amusing. The last thing it needs is a Ken Dodd figure with a mad bouffant to tickle our funny bones into feeling better about the future. Now BoJo has achieved his aim of being Britain's prime minister-elect under the banner of "taking back control", I wonder what he actually has in mind to achieve that?

What is his plan for stabilising the markets that saw millions of pounds wiped off British pension funds during yesterday's financial freefall? What will be the strategy for addressing the balance sheet, and access to borrowing now that credit rating agencies are beginning to downgrade the UK?

How does he plan to mitigate the inevitable decision of Airbus to move the skilled manufacturing of aircraft wings from Lancashire to sites in the EU, where exporting for final assembly in Hamburg and Toulouse will be easier?

What about Nissan, which employs 7000 people in Sunderland and exports to all over Europe and even back to its native Japan? How will they be persuaded that a UK with more restricted access to European trade will be worth investing in? Same with other Japanese car manufacturers, Toyota and Honda, who together with Nissan, have restored the British automotive industry to the extent that in 2014 the UK exceeded France for car manufacturing for the first time ever.

The second truth is that the referendum, David Cameron's gamble on direct democracy, can at least be cited as the British people having their say. 33 million votes - a turnout of around 75% - is impressive (by comparison, the 2015 general election saw just 66% of those eligible voting). And it is clear that the demographic divide between Leave and Remain speaks volumes: that working class people in the north of England and those over 65 expressed their frustration at austerity,  economic malaise and the influence of the metropolitan elite - and, of course, immigration - by voting Leave; and that 70% of those under 25 voted Remain, along with Scotland and London, who have somewhat different allegiances to the European ideal.

Understandably, people on both sides of Remain and Leave are calling for the UK to move on. The Leavers say that the 48% who voted to remain must accept the decision. But look at it another way: the margin between Out and In was just a million votes. A technical majority, yes, but it indicates just how divided the UK is now.

Even if the referendum can be pared down to the competition between two Old Etonians for control of the upper sixth common room, it would be impossible to ignore the extent of British sentiment - for and against - which has been expressed by the referendum. But it's this that makes the actual campaigns so disingenuous. Facts would have been helpful, and I mean actual facts, not spun half-truths and outright lies. Like the £350 million claim, which UKIP's Nigel Farage has admitted was "a mistake". Not that Farage has exactly been blameless - his entire narrative has been one of peddling fear and paranoia, underpinned by grotesque jingoism.

Reuters

His 'breaking point' poster was not only a low point for the Brexit debate, it was a low point for British politics, and a tacit encouragement of the racism becoming ever more prevalent (increasing stories of people of various ethnic and national backgrounds being abused on buses, trains and in high streets - chilling echoes of the American segregation era and 1930s Germany).

Even if one of the central points of the Leave campaign was to free Britain of the overbearing bureaucratic nature of the EU machine, the bid to escape it unleashed an unpleasant tone to the Leave narrative. The soft version of this has been the pro-Leave, Middle England-representing newspapers, The Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Express, peddling (and swallowing) jingoistic references to Spitfires, green fields, Elgar and pints of ale, as if "taking back control" means restoring Britain to some anachronistic ideal.  

Everyone has their right to an opinion, but we've been left with a Britain less "great" as fractured and angry. And still somewhat at the mercy of Farage, a politician who makes Boris Johnson look credible, and whose first comment after the result came in yesterday morning was to crassly declare a bloodless victory, "without having to fight, without a single bullet being fired". Tell that to Jo Cox's children.

Farage can, easily be depicted as the bogeyman of the referendum, and while he might appear to invoke popular support, he has so far failed on several occasions to be elected to any major political institution other than the European Parliament, which he loathes. Johnson might be a clown, but Farage is a joke, flip-flopping on everything, from his own party leadership (resigning after the General Election, having failed to be elected for the seat of Thanet South, only to be reinstated almost immediately) to the actual outcome of the referendum itself. For him to declare yesterday morning that the result was a victory for "ordinary people" and "decent people" both underlined his opportunism and his insensitivity. Were the near-half of all voters not ordinary and indecent then? Probably, in UKIP's eyes, given the affiliations of some of their number with the dehumanisation narrative of the extreme far right.

That said, if those who voted Leave on Thursday truly believe the campaign's Trumpist rhetoric about  taking back their country and making Britain great again, they should now wonder what they've reacquired. On top of the financial and business instability, the political landscape is about to grow ever more fractious.

Just 150,000 Tory party members will choose the next British prime minister, as opposed to the 33 million voters who took part in the actual referendum that led to David Cameron's resignation.

So much for his message that the country had just taken part in perhaps the biggest democratic history in its history and that "We should be proud of the fact that in these islands we trust the people for these big decisions."

Maybe, but what will it mean? What will be the impact of Scotland choosing, decisively, to exit the United Kingdom and re-attach itself to the EU? What will happen to the peace process in Northern Ireland if republicans agitate - and succeed - in securing a referendum on unification with Ireland? How will Wales respond, given that it is already conflicted over whether EU subsidies have been of any help, as the principality's industrial base has been eroded by declines in mining and the steel industry.

The British are famous for their stiff upper lips and stoicism. The sentiment on social media, at least, is, in some places, one of resignation and 'let's just get on with it, shall we?'. Wales and Ireland play each other this afternoon in Euro 2016 so, after a 72-hour hiatus from the football, our summer opiate will provide some relief from the doom, gloom and division of the last couple of days. But after today, after tomorrow, after next week, next month, reality will sink in.

The Tories will tear themselves apart, as usual, as they elect a new prime minister, without anyone else in the country having a say. And the Labour party will do much the same, as it implodes over Jeremy "lukewarm" Corbyn's dismal performance in the Remain campaign, his thinly-veiled euroscepticism diluting any opportunity to convince Labour voters of what they actually stand to lose by voting with their hearts rather than their heads.

Libération's front page gesture may have been in some jest, but the reality is that Great Britain - or what's left of it as a result of the referendum - will need more than just luck in the future. And the hard work begins now. I never thought I'd ever find myself invoking Thatcher, but the job now for whomever runs the country next will indeed be to bring harmony to discord, repair errors with truth, replace doubt with faith, and resolve despair with unity. If there is any left.

Clearing up the toxic mess of Brexit

I don't, as a rule, 'do' politics. On this blog and its predecessor, I have studiously avoided an institution I have little time for, one whose practitioners have - whether they like it or not, and whether warranted or not - the reputation of being self-important egomaniacs.

Of course, that's not to say there aren't diligent and hard working politicians who have something to contribute of genuine benefit to the communities they serve. It's just that those are the politicians you rarely see, let alone hear of, largely because they're busy getting on with their actual jobs, rather than trying to position themselves for a job they would very much like to have next.

Taking this further, I've also stayed well clear of the build-up to today's EU referendum. One reason is that I have genuinely been conflicted by sound arguments from both sides. Another is that I've also been revulsed by arguments which have been seriously flawed. A third reason is that I don't, actually, have any formal say in the debate, having lived outside the UK for more than 15 years and am therefore ineligible to vote. But, as Britain goes to the polls, it's hard to resist some reflection, particularly as the referendum is one of the most important decisions my country will have made in my lifetime.

One further reason is that the debate has brought out the very worst of the institution of politics - and its worsening state of being. Neither campaign, frankly, has been particularly impressive. Both sides have overplayed on emotion and frailty rather than hard, stand-up facts. And even when the factual approach has been pursued, Pinocchio's nose has visibly extended. My natural instinct is to support the Remain position - I couldn't really countenance any other view, having benefited in numerous ways from being an EU citizen. My employers have benefited greatly from trade within the EU, as well as employing me in two EU member countries, with the freedom of movement between them. This freedom, moving between the UK, the Netherlands and France (with a two-year sojourn in the US), has enriched me professionally, culturally and socially. And immeasurably.

Later this year I will be returning permanently to the UK, and I worry what country I'll be coming home to. For the last ten weeks it has been dragged into a pit of toxic political division, with towns, communities and even individual families split along rival referendum lines which, in earlier centuries, would have amounted to the conditions of civil conflict. The blame for this must fall on the politicians and the political rivalries at the root of the Brexit debate, who have, from their central positions in their respective campaigns, spun and even lied to achieve their aims.

Twitter may not be the most faithful barometer of rational thinking, but it has also opened the window on the very worst of the sniping, carping and cynical snidery that has been part and parcel of the referendum. Social media has accentuated and worsened its toxicity: to spend any time on Twitter over the last few weeks is to have observed an encroaching, rabid madness, worsened by the extremes of the right and the left in equal measure. I was left in utter despair the other day by a tweet posted from an account festooned in nationalist sentiment which concluded with a call to the new mayor of London and the Remain-endorsing prime minister, "FUCK OF SADIQ FUCK OF CAMERON". That an argument could have been expressed this way suggests both the unrestrained lack of respect afforded by social media platforms as well as truly appalling standards of spelling, grammar and punctuation. EU or no EU, what kind of moron is being turned out by British schools?

I don't wish to trivialise, however. The EU referendum is too important. It will be a decision that will have very real ramifications for British prosperity. Yes, the UK will still trade with the rest of the world if it leaves the EU, but at what cost to manufacturing jobs in Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow, Sunderland or Swansea when tariffs impact the business of trading? Will Nissan, Honda and Toyota - Japanese companies all - still want to invest in British factories making cars for export? Will London remain the world's financial capital? I would, though, disagree with the idea that the arts and culture would suffer - The Beatles did perfectly alright in Hamburg before the old EEC came along. But these are the arguments we should have been examining, rather than xenophobic nonsense about Syrian refugees fleeing for their lives or Latvians taking British jobs that British people didn't want anyway.

There's no doubt that the European Union can be its own worst enemy. In my work I've seen at close hand how bloated and bureaucratic Brussels can be; I've bought into the argument that a community formed to facilitate free trade has allowed itself to oversee issues about things it has no need - or right - to be involved in. But as a European citizen in every sense, I've also seen what European political and economic unity has achieved, and what the UK stands to lose if it goes it's own way.

This, however, has been masked from view by the sheer crassness of the Leave campaign, and for that we must lay blame at the feet of its leaders: a former London mayor, who extolled the brilliance of his city's multiculturalism while in office only to dive into the murky waters of immigration control while bumbling his way through the Brexit debate, attacking "the agents of Project Fear" while spreading fear himself. Boris Johnson built his personality cult around his Bunteresque, public school clown persona. It was amusing, seeing him on Have I Got News For You, with his manic blond hair and his classical Latin quotations, but throughout this campaign he has too often let his guard down and shown both his naked ambition as well as his unsophisticated, unreconstructed self.

Then there have been the outright lies that Johnson and the equally duplicitous Michael Gove have peddled: the claim that the UK sends £350 million each week to the EU, apparently; the lazy comparisons with pre-war Germany and Nazi scientists discrediting Einstein; the preposterous idea that 78 million Turkish people are preparing to suddenly leave their homes for the UK (any more so than 81 million Germans or 66 million French would). Worse, though, is the Leave leadership's tacit endorsement of that bombastic golf club bore Nigel Farage, a man whose xenophobia is eclipsed only by the outright racism of the swivel-eyed Little Englanders who dote on his every word.

The immigration issue isn't one that can be taken lightly. I've seen the best of immigration and the worst of it. It's a thorny topic, and no amount of saloon bar philosophising from me will even scratch the surface of how to resolve it. But its presence in the darker pockets of the EU referendum has depressed me, and its manifestation within the Brexit debate by those at supposedly the unacceptable extremes of the Leave campaign has been deeply troubling.

Which brings me to Jo Cox. At the top of this post I said that my disdain for politics is largely the result of those who practice it. I've rarely met or seen a politician I like. But in Jo Cox - an MP I hardly knew anything about since she entered Parliament in the 2015 election intake - you sensed something rare and good. To earn the sort of genuine cross-party outpouring Cox's murder stimulated said more about her than any cause she may have stood for or against. She was just doing her job, and by all accounts doing it well - representing her constituents, helping them, supporting them. 

It is right that the Leave and Remain should not have exploited this for their own interests, and for the most part they haven't. But the sight, yesterday, of a Vote Leave campaign banner being flown over Trafalgar Square, not once but three times, during a memorial rally for Cox, in full, cynical knowledge of the hurt and upset it would cause, is a sign of just how far British politics has sunk during the Brexit debate. We've seen something similar in the US, with a presidential election running along even more extreme lines, with one candidate in particular trading hate, fear, paranoia and division for votes. But the US election is not for me to worry about until November. The more pressing event is today.

I can't vote, but I implore those who will to think as long and hard about their choice based on those who presented it. Because, really, would you want a country to be handed over to the likes of Gove and Boris, their lies and misinformation? Worse, their dirty little secret Farage, yapping away from the 19th hole, pint of IPA in one hand, rancid views about immigrants (of which he is one) in the other? It's not the Britain I want to move back to, frankly.

Anger management

It's been an angry, angry weekend. In the south of France, puce men in adidas trainers fought running battles with police, locals and anyone else who'd take them on, while 7,630km away a man with issues walked into a nightclub and shot dead 50 people with an assault rifle, the kind intended for the battlefield.

On the back of these events, people rightfully became angrier still. In the one case, it was UEFA, the French interior minister, football pundits, normal fans, taxi drivers and the bloke to your right in the pub, all sounding off about the latest hooligan atrocity. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, America became ever-more divided across different fault lines: those in favour of gun control, those constitutionally against it; those who saw Omar Mateen's murderous spree in Pulse purely as a homophobic hate crime versus those who saw it purely as another Islamic terrorist attack, and those who saw it simply as another ocean of crimson on America's already blood-drenched record on gun crime.

The anger from Orlando even spilled over onto late night British TV: The Guardian writer Owen Jones stormed off the set of Sky News' review of the newspaper first editions as a discussion between him, anchor Mark Longhurst and columnist Julia Hartley-Brewer overheated as it began to compare Mateen's killing spree with the Bataclan attack by ISIS terrorists in Paris last November.

An increasingly agitated Jones saw the Orlando outrage purely as homophobic, though he acknowledged that it was also terrorism. "It is one of the worst atrocities committed against LGBT people in the western world for generations," he fumed at Longhurst and Hartley-Brewer, "and it has to be called out as such." You could see an angry microphone-shedding departure coming, and thus it did.

Opinions were divided on Twitter as to whether Jones, who had pre-warned on the very same medium before the show that he'd been wound up by events in Florida. Some felt Longhurst wasn't giving him fair voice, others branded Jones petulant and trying to politicise the attacks by accusing Sky of trying to deflect the homophobic angle (telling Longhurst that he did not understand "because he wasn’t gay").

Emotions were clearly running high. Jones made the correct view that, had the attack been on a synagogue, the media narrative would be one of anti-semitism. Longhurst bravely tried to push the case that the attacks weren't about any one interest, but that people had died in the nightclub, but Jones eventually decided "I've had enough of this. I'm going home, sorry." and removed his microphone and exited stage right. He was angry. Proper angry.

Twitter/Jon Sopel

Meanwhile, back on Twitter, full-scale lunacy was in flow. Reliably, presidential candidate Donald Trump waded in with a couple of his ill-considered statements, one which effectly tried to say "I told you so [about muslims]" while fake-modestly shying away from accepting any congratulations for doing so.

As usual it was all about him, and the bile from both anti- and pro-Trump tweeters took on a particularly caustic nature. With little encouragement, unsurprisingly, Trump inflamed further frenzied accusations of Islamaphobia and anti-Islamaphobia. Perhaps that's what he wanted. Further chaos in an already chaotic reaction.

Immigration, however, wasn't the only Trump fault line opened up: his views on gun control, once more repeating the view that had Pulse not been in a gun-free zone, people in the club would have been armed and able to defend themselves. Somehow, I think not. He peddled this same line in the wake of November 13. Having two good friends of mine get out of the Bataclan alive because there wasn't an all-out repeat of the OK Corral will remain one of the things in my life for which  I will be forever thankful.

The attackers in November had been supplied by their ISIS quartermasters. Mateen, on the other hand, had acquired, for a price somewhere around $700, an AR-15-style rifle, the civilian cousin of the American military's M-16 and M-4 assault weapons. Even in its civvie form, the AR-15, its derivatives and its clones, have a vicious rate of semi-automatic fire. An apparently trained shooter like Mateen would have been able to down many of his 50 victims In minutes with few of them knowing anything about it. Smartphone footage from outside the club attest to a rapid sequence of gunshots, something close to what a soldier would call suppression fire. In a crowded nightclub, much like a crowded music hall, that ammounts to cything people down.

And so the pro-gun lobby worked themselves into a frenzy, and the anti-gun lobby did likewise. In fairness, there are arguments on both side that carry water. But the question is, where does it end? At what point is it right that a murderously-inclined individual, with hate crime of any sort on his or her mind, can walk into a shop and, after handing over cash and a seemingly rudimentary amount of background checking transpires, walk out with a military-grade weapon? One, too, responsible for the deaths of 26 teachers and children at Sandy Hook primary school, 12 cinemagoers in Aurora, and 14 public employees in San Bernadino?

I understand the attraction of shooting as a sport. I have American friends who do it. I even have close relatives who have been practicing archers for as long as I can remember. I understand, too, that in many rural and remote parts of the United States, a rifle or a handgun is a necessary colonial throwback, a tool as commonplace as a pitchfork or a tractor. But that, somehow, doesn't discriminate for the murderous and the unhinged getting their hands on the self-same tools. That's why things had to change in Britain. Until Dunblane, firearms ownership was already strictly regulated. But on that occasion, Thomas Hamilton - killing sixteen school children and a teacher - led to the UK adopting some of the most stringent firearms regulations in the world. They may not have stopped gun crime in inner cities, but the blanket ban certainly put weapons designed for war out of the hands of those of diminished responsibility. A sad curtailment of a legitimate sport, but necessarily so.

There have, then, been many reasons this weekend-past for blood pressure to rise and tempers to flare. Acts of racism, xenophobia, knuckle-scraping on an industrial scale, homophobia, islamaphobia, hate and all the demons that bunk with it. But while people seek to pursue their causes and political agendas - no matter how worthy - we should also spare a thought for the 50 families now grieving for their sons and brothers. They may have been drawn from the LGBT community, and were also exclusively drawn from Florida's hispanic community, but they were also drawn from our community: human people. And that, more than anything else, is a cause worth getting angry about.

Why we shouldn't have been surprised...and nor should UEFA

Take the ingredients: England; the unfortunate reputation of some England fans; the port city of Marseille; the history of England supporters in Marseille; a fixture with Russia; the advanced intelligence that Russian 'ultras' were heading for Marseille in search of 'action'; a local community of disaffected youth relishing the prospect of a scrap. Add to the mix all-day drinking, a tired, jaded and nervous police force with a penchant for tear-gassing first, asking questions later. 

It hasn't exactly been a shock to see the sickening violence in the Mediterranean sunshine over this last weekend. The trouble is, those organising Euro 2016 shouldn't have been shocked, either. Moreover, they should have been better prepared for it. UEFA are probably doing the right thing in threatening the Russian and English football associations with ejection from the tournament if the disgraceful scenes in Marseille are repeated - what else can they do? - but then what did UEFA do to prevent them? Stopping football fans fighting is no easier than preventing any spontaneous bar brawl, but it could have been mitigated if the recipe's ingredients had been examined before the sun started to cook them into a bloody stew. The memory of 1998 should have been the first red flag when scheduling an England fixture in Marseille. But, then, threats from local youths, spoiling for a fight over their social situation and, potentially, global events, should have been another red flag. 

However, before we look for excuses, there's no escaping the fact that England fans, drinking from first thing in the morning, dressed in identikit combos of shorts and trainers, stripped to the waist and, by mid-afternoon increasingly belligerent, will have made themselves targets - either for the police (understandably jumpy given the apparent terror threat against Euro 2016) or for any locals wanting to 'defend' their turf. 

It shouldn't have to be this way, of course. The build-up to any football match should be enjoyed with a pint or two, even better with a blast of warm sun. But with England fans arriving in Marseille on Thursday for Saturday night's game, the potential for trouble was always there. What doesn't make sense is why bars around the Vieux Port were open and serving beer at 9am - exactly 12 hours before kickoff.

The drunken, casual xenophobia that accompanied some of the England fans on Thursday and Friday (the usual "no surrender to the IRA" songs, the ISIS goading and "ironic" World War Two references), however, pale into insignificance with Saturday's arrival in the port area by Russian thugs. By all accounts, it was like a military operation and it became clear they weren't just drunken yobs of a different hue. Some wore gum guards and MMA gloves. Some wore England shirts to blend in and confuse. Some had improvised weapons, including reports of a hatchet. Some England fans even noted that they were physically different, as if the special forces of hooligans had been unleashed. Clearly, this was no impromptu violence. This was as premeditated as it was possible to be. Which begs the question, why weren't the authorities better prepared to prevent it? A group of thugs that large doesn't organise itself without some intelligence spilling out.

Even more disturbing were the scenes in the Stade Vélodrome: after suicide bombers targeted the Stade de France last November, it is baffling as to how a flare gun was allowed into the England-Russia game, how a firework went off (chillingly echoing the sound of suicide vests being detonated seven months ago) and how a thin line of just 20 matchday stewards separated Russian and England fans given what had been going on in the town that day. The sight, though, of clearly motivated thugs charging at English fans - including women, children and the elderly - at the end of the 1-1 draw will and should set off alarm bells at both UEFA and FIFA headquarters.

Euro 2012 in Poland & Ukraine was marred by violent incidents involving Russian fans, with the Russian Football Union threatened then with severe sanctions by UEFA, on top of fines for specific acts of what amounted to outright nationalism. These events should have put the Russian Football Union under severe probation. Most of all, the staging of FIFA's 2018 World Cup in Russia must now be placed under the severest scrutiny. If extremist Russian hooligans can bring the sort of terror to Marseille as we saw last night, imagine what they would do on home soil?

I'm not, though, taking sides. English football hooliganism has never, truly, gone away. Thankfully, trouble at home and abroad has been severely mitigated by effective policing and planning. What has happened - and it would be naive to assume that it no longer does - takes place largely out of view and therefore unreported. Domestic games are now, thankfully, dry affairs, family entertainment-orientated, even (you do become impervious to the fruitier language). The days when I remember elements of the West Ham ICF appearing, threateningly, in the old family section at Stamford Bridge are long behind us.

But, whether it is just being reported more or is actually happening, there have been more incidents of old-style trouble at football matches in the UK in recent months. Which should have been another red flag to the prospect of Marseille repeating the chaos of 1998 and Charleroi in 2000. Perhaps, then, we've been lulled into a sense of false security, even if we should have been simply enjoying a behavioural change. The headlines in 1998 were justifiably despairing. The English club ban following Heysel had served to demonise football to some extent in England, but by 1998, eight years after the ban had been lifted, it was hoped that lessons had been learned.

In 2006 I went to several World Cup games in Germany, including all of England's, and couldn't have enjoyed a better experience. There was drinking, there was sunshine, there was singing (including the inevitable references to events between 1939 and 1945...), and there was, of course, the ever-present threat of trouble from agents provocateurs. But there was also supreme German organisation, and no sense of foreboding emanating from policing. It appeared that the combination of stringent law enforcement, intelligence gathering on known troublemakers and an appreciation by yobs that getting caught abroad will result in jail sentences was finally paying off. Now, one has to wonder whether the guard has been let down.

As has always been the case, those mixed up in the Marseille madness will be the minority. Most of the fans from both England and Russia will have been there for the football, the camaraderie and the banter, even if they are, to put it politely, "boisterous". Football fans enjoying a beer while discussing team selections will not attract media attention. Brawling, beer bottle-throwing, bloodied - or worse - fans, facing down notoriously heavy-handed riot police with their tear gas and water cannon, will. That shouldn't just be a stain on the reputations of the nations involved, but on those responsible for organising Euro 2016. Which is why if England and Russia are kicked out of the competition, UEFA will have to face some very severe questions indeed, because Germany and other host nations have demonstrated that you can stage a football tournament and not have it descend into violence.

Are we in or out of Europe?

So this is the eve of an event that could have a profound effect on Europe, that will place the continent in sharp focus, make and break careers, and will have a measurable impact on the economy.

But enough about the Brexit debate, tomorrow night Euro 2016 kicks off, here in France. This will be the third time I've been living in a European Championships host nation - the previous two being Euro '96 (England) and Euro 2000 (the northern half of Netherlands & Belgium). The contrast, however, couldn't be any different.

In 1996, England was awash with the Cool Britannia spirit and fuelled by Britpop. We English were beside ourselves with excitement at hosting the first major football tournament since the 1966 World Cup, and we all knew how that turned out for us. However, if we needed a reminder, there was Three Lions, the song written by David Baddiel and Frank Skinner with Ian Broudie of The Lightning Seeds, with its bittersweet refrain of "Thirty years of hurt".

Everywhere you went, people were singing "It's coming home, it's coming home - football's coming home!". A new national anthem was born, a replacement for God Save The Queen (not the Pistols' version) and an alternative to Land Of Hope And Glory and all those blood-pumpers by Elgar at The Proms. And it fitted right into the cadence of intrinsically English sounds at the time by Blur, Oasis, Pulp and others.

Euro '96 was a magical time. As magical as the 1990 World Cup in Italy had been - even with a similar outcome for the Lions. In 1996 the sun shone and England were on a high. Though their opening game against Switzerland was an unexpected 1-1 stumble, there was that piece of Paul Gascoigne magic in the 2-0 win over Scotland that followed. Then came the 4-1 demolition of the Dutch which came next, along with the abiding memory of away fans clad in their customary luminous orange attire partying throughout London with home fans. There was a lot of love going on. And then England's quarter-final with Spain, one of the fancied teams, which ended 0-0 and had to be decided on penalties, not England's strongest point. Except they won it by four strikes to two and went on to yet another semi-final with Germany. Which they lost on penalties, obviously.

The reason I drag all this up is that the contrast between England in 1996 and France 20 years later couldn't be greater. Well, I say France, but I can only really speak for Paris. But if the French capital is anything to go by, I'm not seeing much excitement here. Yes, there are official flags and banners hanging from lamposts and the enormous Fan Zone is up in the Champ de Mars park behind the Eiffel Tower, but there is no obvious fervour, no cars driving around bearing patriotic penants - nothing to really indicate that Europe's 24 top teams (which, surely, must be almost all of them...) are here for at least the next two weeks, if not the tournament's duration.

Maybe it is a consequence of the gloom I posted about on Monday: the Seine floodwaters may have receded, but the strikes go on, including industrial action by refuse workers leading to piles of uncollected rubbish on the streets of Paris. Coupled with the very real threat of a terror attack or attacks (with fears nuanced heavily by the fact that the national stadium, the Stade De France, was targeted by suicide bombers on November 13), people just don't seem to be enthusing about arguably the world's second most prestigious international football tournament taking place on home soil.

Perhaps it's simply nonchalance, the local sangfroid you grow used to, rubbing off on me. Perhaps it's the weariness we all feel after months of scandal and the foul taste international football administration has left in our mouths. But, either way, Iam yet to succumb to the child-on-Christmas-Eve giddyness I would normally possess the day befor a big tournament. I haven't spent hours studying a free newspaper wallchart, and dutifully transplanting all the dates into my calendar; I'm not au fait with all ten venues; and given that a staggering quarter of the total players at Euro 2016 play in the Premier League, I've failed to be that bothered by the traditional mystique of not knowing who-is-who that accompanies watching nationalities compete with each other.

The sense of local malaise notwithstanding, perhaps my jadedness comes from the fact that, as an Englishman, I've grown used to disappointment. "30 years of hurt" was achingly brutal 20 years ago. When the 50th anniversary of Bobby Moore lifting the gleaming Jules Rimet trophy comes around on July 30 this year, it will be even more painful that, potentially, half a century will have passed without England progressing further than a semi-final in either the Euros or a World Cup.

The closest we've come are two semi-final penalty shootouts. We have, to be honest, and to borrow from José Mourinho, become a specialist in failure. Even that damn brass band accompanying every England match still insists on playing the theme from The Great Escape, which may have been one of the finest films made about the Second World War, but also depicts a brave but ultimately doomed attempt to break out of a German POW camp (76 escaped, 73 were captured or which 50 were shot...). Stirring as the music is, there's a heavy irony to its use in getting crowds going.

It is regularly pointed out that the primary source of our angst may be that we're just not as good as we'd like to think we are, that just because the Premier League is the world's most popular - and lucrative - football league doesn't mean that the English national team can match it. Not for nothing the current European champions, Spain, have such a player foothold in the English top-tier. The debates rage on message boards and in radio phone-ins about the impact of foreign players and coaches on England's chances at a national level (and not just England - it's a debate in other national leagues too).

When you look at England's tournament history since 1966, it really isn't that good. For the nation that invented association football and is, along with Scotland, the joint oldest national team in the world, for every euphoric Italia '90 and Euro '96 there are the ignominious appearances, disappearances and even no-shows at World Cups and Euros. Compare this to the Germans, who've reached 13 finals at either World Cup or European level. Compare this, too, with Spain who've won the European title three times, France twice, and even the Italians, Czechs, Dutch, Danish and Greeks have each won one European Championship trophy since England last touched silverware.

We've been there before, too, with talk of a "golden generation". Even when that illustrious club of gifted young pups from Manchester United were forming the core of the England side, success was elusive. So what this time? No one is going to overdo it. Roy Hodgson does have in his squad an emerging force of prospects - like Kane, Alli, Sterling and Rashford, along with Jamie Vardy, fresh from his Player of the Year exploits at Leicester. But will these relative lion cubs be good enough on the European stage? Talent they have, but not the experience. And, perhaps the stamina, after another gruelling domestic season, though that is too often an excuse rather than an explanation. England might have some enticing options up front, but there's a thinness to their defensive capabilities that only suggests vulnerability.

In the end, the jaded England fan will take it as it comes. We've been disappointed before and we'll be disappointed again, so there's no point pinning even the most optimistic patriotism on this time. Even if we're all surprised but what actually transpires.

Doctor on the go

Press Association

It being June 7 and three days before Euro 2016, I would have hoped to have drawn a firm and profoundly unsatisfied line under Chelsea's dismal domestic season. But no.

There has been the coda of annoyance wrapped up in outstanding legal claims against the club and José Mourinho from Dr. Eva Carneiro, all stemming from the incident on the opening day of the Premier League season when she, as first team doctor, along with physio Jon Fearn, were summoned to attend the injured Eden Hazard on the Stamford Bridge pitch, only to be demonstrably admonished by the-then team manager in his now infamous Basil Fawlty-like eruption. Two days later, Carneiro was very publically demoted by the club - supposedly on Mourinho's instructions - leading to her not returning to work.

And so, over the course of two relatively short sessions at the decidedly unglamourous London South Employment Tribunal in Croydon, Carneiro has had her claims of wrongful dismissal against the club, and a personal claim against Mourinho himself, tossed about by barristers. We heard that the club had offered Carneiro £1.2 million to settle her claims, which she had rejected, and that we were told that she had asked for a pay rise in the region of £400,000, amongst other benefits.

We also heard the club say, in disparaging tones, that Carneiro had become increasingly "visible", appearing in an Ice Bucket Challenge video for charity, thanking Facebook followers for their support in the wake of the August 8 incident, and even that she had "positioned" herself in the Chelsea dugout to be noticeable behind Mourinho during matches.

On the one hand we can probably put this aggressive stance down to the game Chelsea's lawyers choose to play in contesting Carneiro's claims. That's the way high stakes legal disputes go down. But the simple fact is that it should have never come to this. Mourinho should have just apologised in the immediate aftermath of the Hazard incident and put his alleged use of the colourful Portuguese phrase filha da puta ("daughter of a whore") down to the frustration we all have to exhale in the heat of a game.

But he compounded it by later making ill-advised comments about club employees' knowledge of the game ("Even if you are a kit man, a doctor or a secretary on the bench, you have to understand the game," he said at the post-match press conference), and worsened it still when the club announced, a couple of days later, a much-reduced role for Carneiro. No wonder she didn't want to come back on any terms.

Today, Carneiro and the club settled the dispute privately without revealing conditions of the settlement. In a statement to the tribunal, Chelsea's barrister said that the club "regretted the circumstances" which led to Carneiro leaving the club and apologised unreservedly to her and her family for the distress caused. Poignantly, the statement said: "We wish to place on record that in running onto the pitch Dr. Carneiro was following both the rules of the game and fulfilling her responsibility to the players as a doctor, putting their safety first." Make of that admission what you will.

Carneiro herself said in a statement: "I am relieved that today we have been able to conclude this tribunal case. It has been an extremely difficult and distressing time for me and my family and I now look forward to moving forward with my life. My priority has always been the health and safety of the players and fulfilling my duty of care as a doctor."

Notably, there was no personal statement from Mourinho himself, who also attended today's hearing. Chelsea's statement included a line that: "Jose Mourinho also thanked Dr. Carneiro for the excellent and dedicated support she provided as First Team Doctor and he wishes her a successful career." All of which reeks of piety.

Football, as we all know, remains a defiantly unreformed bastion of rigid convention. That Carneiro was so prominent as first team doctor was in itself a major victory for women challenging for roles that men almost by right seem to take in the game. Even the grounds on which Chelsea's legal team chose to counter Carneiro's claims hinted strongly at an agenda that went beyond trying to discredit her allegation. Inevitably, in the unreconstructed world of Twitter, the trolls came out in force in a blizzard of closet mysogyny, accusing Carneiro of being a money-grabbing gold digger. And worse.

Mourinho himself, now anointed at Manchester United, has come out of it all relatively scot-free. Apart from the statement issued through his former club's lawyers, there is no word or reaction from him, and definitely not the formal apology he could have given last August which would have resolved the issue. Merely thanking Carneiro for her "excellent and dedicated support" and wishing her "a successful career" is about as mealy-mouthed as you could get.

© Simon Poulter 2015

Chelsea, Mourinho, Carneiro and certainly Manchester United will want to move on hastily. In a way, so should we all. But it leaves open a dangerous chasm for the affair to fall into, taking with it the debate over women in prominent positions at Premier League clubs. Carneiro was a pioneer in this regard. There are plenty of women at leading clubs, but few - if any - as front line-visible or in leading roles, with the exception of media-savvy executives like Karren Brady and even Delia Smith, as well as the various ladies teams.

Carneiro was out there as a key part of Chelsea's first team set-up, one that meant she faced inevitable sexist abuse from neanderthals at away grounds - and even from her own club's supporters, despite carrying out a job as critical as that of a club doctor, one of the basic tenets of her argument over the treatment she received from Mourinho. It would be a shame if, after this affair, other women - in medical or coaching roles or any other - were put off from applying for senior positions at football clubs.

There will be those who think I'm being overly PC about this, and even shoehorning a feminist debate into football. But when I think back to Carneiro's first appearance on the bench at Stamford Bridge, there was plenty of nudge-nudge, wink-winking going on, and the customary chorus of "Celery!". It was, though, short lived. After a while, even the less progressive members of the Bridge fraternity just got on with watching the game, rather than the petite Gibraltan doctor. That, believe me, was progress. One wonders now, given some of the things revealed over the last two days, that we haven't taken an almighty step backwards.

Après nous le déluge

© Simon Poulter 2016

When I first moved to Paris, five and a half years ago, I published a post romanticising about this city. It contained all the usual stuff about the timeless Parisian beauty, its overwhelming architecture and bountiful culture - basically all the things that you usually read about the place and, indeed, France in general. If they weren't so damned valid they would be bona fide, nailed-on clichés.

In the years since, though, I have managed to avoid  - quite deliberately - any of the lame old tropes that those, especially from my home island, trot out about France. You know, the lengthy lunches, the streets of Paris being minefields of canine excrement and impatient, horn-handy drivers, moody waiters, and an apparent national tendency to down tools at the slightest industrial provocation. And so on and so on.

As with any collection of national sterotypes, some fit and some don't. France - and Paris in particular - is no different. The 'Allo 'Allo generalisations are what they should be - mildly racist but mostly harmless comic motifs (although I must confess to yesterday seeing a man wearing a beret at a cafe, a first in almost 40 years as either schoolboy visitor or, now, resident). That said, the reputation for doggy poo, drivers and waiters in Paris, in no special order, appears to be enthusiastically upheld.

But there's more. When I first declared that I'd be moving to France, I was helpfully counselled by mostly fellow Brits that I would find it impossible to get anything done. Because, I was told, the French were always on strike, that their farmers burned sheep on motorways in protest, that their trawlermen blockaded the Channel ports over EU subsidies, and that old perennial, the air traffic controllers went on strike during the school holidays. This would maintain the popular belief that France remained the angry militant of Europe, long after such behaviour seemed relevant in the modern world.

So, for the most part of my five and a half years here I've hardly seen any such mardeyness. Until now. In recent weeks we've had a full-on, wintry blast of angry action. None of your uppity taxi protests here, or mildly aggravating work-to-rules by street cleaners. No, proper, crippling industrial chaos and tear gas-inducing street protests over President François Hollande's plans for reforms to the country's arcane labour laws. Flash riots in parts of Paris, strikes by oil refinery workers cutting fuel supplies, stoppages at water treatment plants, and then last week a strike by employees of the SNCF, the national rail company which halved the number of trains in and out of the capital (and is still in place today), with staff on the Paris Métro also staging sporadic walkouts.

© Simon Poulter 2016

Add to all this the dramatic flooding that saw the Seine break its banks in central Paris, threatening precious exhibits at the Louvre and the Museum de Orsay, as well as blighting homes in the southern Parisian suburbs, and you end up with a feeling that France is heading to hell in a handcart, even if the floods were a natural disaster. It's just that they were yet another disaster to affect this seemingly hapless country.

This week Euro 2016 gets under way in France, with the country hosting the first European football championships with an expanded format of 24 teams competing in ten city venues. With France clearly in the crosshairs of Islamic terrorism, the sense of national nervousness is palpable. Throw in an all-out, four-day strike planned by Air France pilots next weekend, more strikes on the railways and unions in other sectors appearing to dig in - as is the government in maintaining the need to drive reforms to employment laws - and the possibility of an utterly chaotic tournament has become very real.

Of course, we shouldn't get too carried away. The games will go ahead, the strikes won't achieve anywhere near their ambition of impacting infrastructure, and security will be tighter than ever at the games. But that won't improve the mood. The Charlie Hebdo attacks last year, and then the attrocities in Paris last November - compounded by the closely related events in Brussels - have inevitably led to an undercurrent of fear. The sight of properly tooled-up soldiers on residential streets have both reassured and reminded residents of the real risks France faces in equal measure.

From abroad, France is increasingly looking like a nation under siege from within. The stereotypes will no doubt be hardening. The strikes, the terror threat - even the floods - have given the impression of a country in trouble, led by a president and government unable to take control of that trouble and unable to bring about reforms intended to modernise the local labour market amid continuing macro-economic challenges for French companies.

The government's proposed changes to labour laws would make it easier for employers to hire and fire, but the unions claim that this will merely enable employers to bypass workers' rights on pay and working hours. These are all issues which historically contribute to the national reputation. True, there is a 35-hour week in place, but in Paris at least, the volume of people on the Paris Métro at 7am and again at 7pm would suggest that metropolitan working hours are a long way from the proscribed norm. And as for the apparent culture of endless lunches, I haven't seen that either. Occasionally you will see someone disappear for a couple of hours of gossipping, but en masse, most people are in and out of the works canteen within an hour and that's it.

Working hours and retirement age notwithstanding, the bigger issue at stake is the ability to staff up and staff down: the belief pushed by the government is that greater flexibility will in turn make employers more flexible to hire in the first place. But despite the wave of strikes and riots in recent weeks, and prevailing defiance from the militant CGT union, popular opinion is changing. An opinion poll published over the weekend revealed that a majority of French people are now opposed to the anti-reform protests and strikes, possibly as a result of the damage to the country's image that they've caused as it prepares to host one of the world's most prestigious sporting events.

Meanwhile, Hollande and his government remain equally defiant on the need to push through the reforms. "I fully accept that this law could be unpopular," Manuel Valls, the swaggering Spanish-born French prime minister told foreign journalists in a briefing last week. "Public opinion is worried. But we are at a key moment. Stars are aligned, with the economic recovery and the reformism that my government embodies," he outlined. "The question is how we reform this country," he went on. "Can a minority union block a law? If we were to retreat, it would mean paralysis . . . The French have gotten used too much to the fact it was enough to protest in the streets to block reforms."

Whether the government, or the unions, prevail, something has to give. France’s jobless rate currently stands stubbornly at 10%, the highest in a generation. Worse still is youth unemployment, which is currently at 24%, blighting a substantial proportion of the very electoral base that President Hollande had promised to address. Notably, some of the strongest protests in recent weeks have been amongst the student community in France - a stereotypical echo of the 1960s riots, perhaps, but an indication that the country's youth is feeling increasingly abandoned. In some communities, that has the potential to light some exceedingly dangerous fuses indeed. And may have done so already.

It would be wholly wrong to cast France as an unlivable, unworkable basketcase. And from my Parisian eyrie it would be wrong, too, to generalise an entire nation (as is often remarked, France is two countries - Paris, and the rest of the nation). But beneath the romantic veneer that drew me here - and has drawn all the other romantics, writers, artists, philosophers and dreamers throughout history - lurks a country that is not exactly dysfunctional, but on the other hand, doesn't help itself. I truly hope that Euro 2016 is a success, and that it passes without incident. I also truly hope that, one way or another, the country will find the path to the prosperity that other European giants mostly enjoy.

But, as the Paris floodwaters gradually recede, one can't help feeling all that positive about any true return to normality, because that normality seems to be - for the first time since I've been here - somewhat chaotic, and as ugly as Paris is an aesthetic treat. Après nous le déluge...?

© Simon Poulter 2016

Now pay attention: let's get Bond right

So let's get this straight: will there be a new James Bond the next time 007 appears on the big screen? Though Daniel Craig hasn't exactly said he won't appear for a fifth time - and the BBC recently reported a source saying that "no decision is likely be made for a while" - the increasing weariness with which he's appeared to talk about a character he revitalised would suggest that, at 48, he will be hanging up the shoulder holster for his Walther PPK. According to another anonymous source, "Daniel is done - pure and simple", and despite being offered oodles of money for another two Bond films, Spectre may prove to be his last.

Which, let's be honest, may be for the best. Not that there was anything wrong with Craig or indeed Spectre itself - a fine addition to the official Bond canon - but as he heads towards his 49th year (as I am - being just four months older), I can see why all that running across rooftops, getting shot at on ski slopes and generally getting beaten about will be losing its lustre. I know I struggle with the Paris Métro first thing in the morning.

So now we must endure the time-honoured tradition of the media guessing game. Without much guessing going on. The press has convinced itself that the next Bond will be Tom Hiddlestone, mostly on the back of his performance in The Night Manager. As good as that was - and he was terrific - Hiddlestone is not Bond for me. Too fey, too posh. Too nice, even.

Now, I know that when Daniel Craig was announced as Pierce Brosnan's replacement the reaction was "too blond, too short, too Scouse" (well, my reaction), and he went on to be arguably the best 007 since Sean Connery. So a tall, lanky, Eton-educated actor like Hiddlestone might surprise us still. But, really.

Connery set the mould; Lazenby replicated it, before Connery briefly returned; Moore turned the character into a camp 70s playboy; Dalton added some celtic grit to the character, again in the Connery manner; and then Brosnan came along, and the franchise gradually descended into self parody with the ridiculous Die Another Day. No surprise, then, that Hiddlestone's portrayal of John le Carré's unlikely spy Jonathan Pine in the BBC's sumptuous adaptation of The Night Manager auto-suggested the idea that he could be a Bond.

There are, though, better candidates. Henry Cavill is the obvious one, being physically closest to the Connery frame, while Tom Hardy would be another to fit the delta of muscularity and sophistication. Damian Lewis crops up, too, in the lists, and that wouldn't be a bad shout, either. And why not Idris Elba, despite the obvious? But then I read that Nicholas Hoult and Jamie Bell are potentials, even though the latter is still, for many of us, Billy Elliott.

Pictures: Twitter/Gillian Anderson

And while we're on the subject of outside bets, Gillian Anderson and Game Of Thrones' Emilia Clarke have thrown their hats into the ring, sort of. Here is, though, where a line must be drawn. And I'm not being sexist in saying so.

James Bond is James Bond. Not Jane Bond or Jamelia Bond. James. Ian Fleming's literary vision was of a tall, dark haired man, resembling Hoagy Carmichael, a fact Bond's ill-faited lover Vesper Lynd remarks upon in Casino Royale - "something cold and ruthless". That description, along with Bond's facial structure and hair colour, cropped up throughout the Fleming books and, of course, influenced the choice of Connery when Cubby Broccoli came calling to make Dr. No into a film.

I've got nothing against Anderson - quite the opposite as it goes - but why would it not be possible for the Bond people, MGM studios and Eon Productions, to create a franchise for her, or any other actress? Are we so insistent on political correctness when it comes to fictional characters that the search for a new James Bond must be turned into an equal opportunities debate? It has nothing to do with the physicality of the part, either. It's really about gender: Bond is male. Has there ever been a debate about a male actor taking over the role of Lara Croft?

I know that I have just come across as the "sexist, misogynist, dinosaur" that M herself accused the Brosnan Bond of being in their opening encounter in Goldeneye, but is it so wrong to keep fictional characters as they were intended, as they were invisioned? And is it so hard to come up with new characters that give actors the opportunity to create a new franchise? There's such a paucity of good, strong characters for female actors as it is, so the idea of repurposing an existing male role seems counter-productive.

Picture: Heineken

Whomever gets the gig, however, will have a lot to live up to. The four Daniel Craig Bond films over the last 11 years have brought the franchise up to date in so many ways, not least of which a welcome dourness to counter some of the needless frivolity that the Brosnan Bond indulged. The two directed by Sam Mendes were both terrific action films and stunning cinematic experiences (Roger Deakins' photography in the Shanghai scenes of Skyfall are amongst my favourite in any movie).

These harder, darker and more contemporary Bond films may not be everyone's Vesper Martini, of course, but the Craig films - even the much-criticised Quantum Of Solace - have, though, demonstrated that Bond could be different and, yet, at the same time, make the character stronger. I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised if, indeed, the job does go to Hiddlestone (or Anderson, for that matter). I just need a lot more convincing of its wisdom.